Places Discussed

"In today's knowledge-based economy, it is clear that egalitarian policies that guarantee
higher education, health care, and child care--the sorts of policies that
release talented individuals from dependence on employers, spouses, and
accident of birth--are in fact best for ensuring social
mobility and unleashing creativity" (p. 222).

Daniel Brook's careful examination of the problems aspiring middle-class and upper-middle class people
face in competing for scarce resources reveals an inherent problem in public policy:
our structure for taxes and regulation (or lack thereof) create
such high income variance
that individual creativity, freedom, and mobility for the people
below the top-most income bracket
has become diminished.
Brook's point is that our entire economy suffers
when the most creative,
entrepreneurial, and diligent people become slaves to "the golden handcuffs"--the need
to take a high-paying job that doesn't fully tap their skills or passion--all because
of soaring costs for
high-quality housing, urbanism, childcare,
and education.
Brook's point has implications for urban areas
in that he shows how the
demand for safe, high-quality urban areas is not being met
with supply. The result is that high-income people can bid up the prices of
these scarce resources.

The high points of The Trap illustrate how false dichotomies
frame public policy debates. The first part of the book examines the
false choice of freedom versus equality. Brook shows how putting
debates about individual rights, justice, or economic issues in these
terms sets up false choices.
Barry Goldwater's definition of freedom--the power to spend free of taxation
and regulation (p. 14) is presented as antithetical to a concept of equality
is in a zero-sum game with freedom (p. 95). Brook shows (pp. 94-97) how
these assumptions lead to compromises--and that, over the past years, these
compromises have involved buying into the idea that freedom from
taxation and regulation is the ultimate goal of a healthy society. Indeed,
even the idea that taxes and regulation could be considered good has
become so ingrained in debates that this false dichotomy persists.
Brook provides no clear solutions, but he present illustrations of people
facing the outcome of these and other false choices in economic terms:
"...the new inequality has rendered the standards of living
of all but the wealthy so precarious that overwork has become
the price of standing still on a moving treadmill." (p. 211).

While Brook makes an excellent case, it is
based on his particular methodology and assumptions.
On page xi, he describes his research method as
"personal interviews with dozens of people."
Brook shows considerable interview and
writing skills, but he doesn't seem to get beyond his social context--east
coast and west coast cities are presented as the
"important" options for living without question, even the face
of rising costs.
Contrast this with
Karlgaard's book,
Life 2.0,
in which flyover country is shown as a choice for living.
Secondarily, "dozens of people" within the Yale graduate Brook's social
circle don't make up even a representative sample even of elite
classes (see
The Clustered World (Weiss 2000)), for
example, to see how elites exist in the flyover land between the coasts).
I know that the definition of a "national trend" is what three friends of a
New York Times reporter do,
so I suppose I should be willing to accept the extended
circle of a Yale graduate as representative of
economic choices faced by many.

Brook's main accomplishment is showing how today, the ideal of
Thomas Jefferson suffers:

"Only by enacting decent rules, Jefferson understood, can we
create a society in which the vast majority of us--neither saint nor criminal,
neither so good we will go above and beyond what the rules
require nor so evil we will break whatever rules are set--can
live decent lives." (p. 226).